Furball Aero-Design/Detail & Scale 1/48 Colorful Gray and White F9F Cougars Decal First Look

By Michael Benolkin

First Look

Furball Aero-Design continues its collaboration with Detail & Scale and their fifth release covers a cross-section of gray over white F9F-8s in US Navy line service (and one Marine). This set provides markings for ten different aircraft from nine different squadrons and seven different aircraft carriers. This nice service cross-section provides a nice variety of unit colors to select from for your Kitty Hawk 1/48 F9F-8 Cougar kit. Once you see this set, you might want to buid several.

The eleven subjects in this set include:

• F9F-8, 141217, VA-46, X/304, USS Randolph, 1957
• F9F-8, 144301, VF-144, NK/403, USS Hornet, 1957
• F9F-8, 144339, VA-26, NC/302, USS Kearsarge, 1957
• F9F-8, 144353, VF-123, W/301, NAS El Centro, 1956
• F9F-8, 141177, VA-36, AP/304, USS Franklin D. Roosevelt, 1958
• F9F-8B, 141099, VF-81, AM/203 USS Intrepid, 1958
• F9F-8, 144294, VA-76, AN/301, USS Intrepid, 1958
• F9F-8P, 141726, VFP-62, PP/87, USS Lexington, 1957
• F9F-8P, 141688, VFP-62, GA/901, 1958, 'LIFE'
• F9F-8P, 144425, VMCJ-2, CY/10, USS Saratoga, 1957

The sheet is printed by Cartograf and the printing is very well done. What's more, none of these decals require the modeler to stack multiple layers of markings atop one another to recreate artwork. This trend by some decal companies of producing multiple-layer decals is unfortunate as it puts the burden on you to do the work of what should have been done by the decal maker.

Included in this set is an interesting errata sheet - not for the decals but for the Kitty Hawk kit. There is a list of corrections provided by Detail and Scale which will help to render an accurate F9F-8 or F9F-8P model.

This decal set provides a nice array of airframe stencils and marking sufficient for (at least) two models.

My sincere thanks to Furball Aero-Design/Detail & Scale for this review sample!